By Cameron Gillon: Timothy Bradley is hoping that once he is back in the ring and wins a few fights that he can get a third fight to settle the score with Manny Pacquiao, the WBO welterweight champion. Back in June 2012 Bradley defeated Pacquiao in a highly controversial split decision to win the WBO welterweight title and ended Pacquiao’s seven year unbeaten winning record.
Bradley then had a rematch with Pacquiao in April this year and this time lost in a clear 12 round unanimous decision which gave Bradley his first loss on his record.
In the rematch, Bradley injured his calf and is currently out on the sidelines and hasn’t got a fight lined up this year but is hoping to return in November, December. Bradley also said he doesn’t want his team and promoter Bob Arum to put him in a warm up or a tune up fight and wants to get straight back in with fighting the best. ‘I don’t want no tune up fight, man. I’m not about that. I just want to fight the best and make great fights.’ You got to admire Bradley, but if his injury is severe he might want to take a lower tier fighter in his return just to see how the injury is. I’m sure a rematch with Ruslan Provodnikov would be a good fight seeing as both of them are coming off losses and after their first fight that got fight of the year in 2013 would be another great fight the fans and one you’d expect Bradley to win much more clearer in the next after already beating Ruslan.
It would be better to see Bradley in with the likes of Keith Thurman, Amir Khan, Robert Guerrero or Danny Garcia once he moves up, but at the moment it still doesn’t look like Golden Boy and Top Rank are working together so it’s more likely we will see Bradley in with Provodnikov, Brandon Rios, Chris Algieri or Juan Manual Marquez. Now that Tim Bradley re-signed with Top Rank, he is in the same situation as Pacquiao where he like is going to be struggling to get big fights and will have to settle for rematch after rematch, which gives a good reason that we may end up seeing Bradley/Pacquiao 3 somewhere down the line. Pacquiao has a 5-fight deal with Arum which lasts through to 2016 and you can bet chances are Timothy Bradley will get another shot.
Manny Pacquiao has an upcoming title defense against the young Chris Algieri on November 22nd in Macao, China. Algieri is coming up from light welterweight division to fight Pacquiao at a 142 catch weight. Manny’s trainer Freddie Roach is predicting Pacquiao to win by a knockout and end the long drought of time of when he last scored a knockout victory. Pacquiaoi’s last KO dates back to late 2009 when Manny knocked Miguel Cotto out in the 12th round. Since then, Pacquiao seems to have lost a lot of the power, speed that he had back in the days of when he beat Cotto, Ricky Hatton, Oscar De La Hoya, and Margarito.
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